UPDATE (June 2020):

It’s been almost 2 years since I made this post and since then SeeClickFix has been acquired by CivicPlus. Besides some design changes (that I love) and new contact form fields, they’ve kept it the same. I’m so flattered, thanks guys! I really appreciate it!

Click image for full view.

Getting unqualified inbound leads sucks more than getting no leads at all. They’re a waste of time and money. When you have a sales team to back up, you can’t afford to get your pipeline clogged by that crap.

When I was at SeeClickFix, we had 2 main groups of website visitors that made it to the demo landing page:

  • Not targets: Citizens wanting to report issues in their neighborhoods.
  • Targets: Local government officials interested in the software for their municipalities.

Every morning, my Salesforce dashboard would show new leads. But when I checked the report, the overwhelming majority of these people were citizens, not municipal officials! The form also had no message field so I’d only have names and contact information with no other information.

While the website instructed citizens to use the free citizen tools (mobile app & browser interface), it wasn’t clear so many of them still filled out the demo page form. The top and bottom of the homepage had a bright orange button that clearly said “Demo” and led to this page. Even then, this did little to deter citizen visitors from filling out this form.

Our demo landing page wasn’t doing us any favors and we needed a change ASAP.

The Old Demo Landing Page

This is what it looked originally looked like:

It obviously looked much better in real life but this is a cached version. The press logos (seen in the new version) were visible. Click to see a larger view.


Closer look at text

Closer look at form

The New Demo Landing Page

10 Demo Landing Page Examples That Get Prospects to Act was my Bible. I printed out every demo page on there and wrote down what I liked and disliked each one. This was the end result:

Click to see a larger version

Link

Demo Landing Page Improved

Clear Target Audience

  • Old Page: The text mentioned citizens as much as it mentioned local governments. It was very unclear who the demo was meant for.
  • New Page: The text explicitly says the demo is for local government officials. Other visitors (citizens & current clients) are directed to appropriate places.

Clear Call To Action

  • Old Page: The page was meant for a demo but it didn’t say “demo” anywhere in the actual page. The CTA was “Let’s Talk!”. Was the prospect requesting a demo or a conversation? They’re not the same thing.
  • New Page: The text says “demo” and form clearly states “Schedule a Demo” and “Request a Demo” as the CTA.

Follow Through Instructions Provided

  • Old Page: The page never mentioned what would happen once a prospect filled out the form. Would they get a call or an email?
  • New Page: The text says that the prospect will get a call. They now know to look out for it.

Social Proof

  • Old Page: Phrases like “save money”, “millions of satisfied citizen users”, “award-winning”, “happy partner towns”, etc. were vague and unsubstantive. The content was not enticing because it offered no clear benefits to the prospect.
  • New Page: The content is specific, starting off with the number of customers. Each bullet point discusses a real-life situation of how a prospect can benefit from using SeeClickFix. Never talk about features, always talk about benefits.

More Communication

  • Old Page: There was no message field. Sales reps had no idea what the prospect wanted to discuss.
  • New Page: The message field is required so a sales rep only gets leads from serious prospects who already have an idea of what they want to discuss.

Results:

Everything worked pretty fast. Unqualified inbound leads decreased by 80% within 2 weeks!

My main takeaways are:

  1. Be specific about what group you’re targeting.
  2. Tell them why they should take the time to talk to you.
  3. Don’t be vague about how great you are!